Birdhouse

(2017/18) Global audio internet-of-things artwork
A bird is flying around the world. It flies from birdhouse to birdhouse. You cannot see it, but you can hear it when it flies into one of them, moves about, tweets, sings, and then flies away again to the next birdhouse.

These are no ordinary birdhouses, this is an internet-of-things work of art. All birdhouses are connected by WiFi to the internet. Disconnect yours and the virtual bird will visit all of the other connected birdhouses. Reconnect it and the bird will be visiting yours again.

There will be many birdhouses all over the world, but there is only one bird. It flies from one birdhouse to another. You never know exactly when the bird will be around your particular birdhouse, but there is a website with an online map that shows you where all birdhouses are located and where the bird is at that particular time.

Because the birdhouses are connected to the internet, a lot of information is available to the bird, for instance about weather conditions. The bird can decide to fly to where it’s warm, or where there’s daylight.

There is no fixed flight order; the bird decides where it will fly to next. However, it is possible to attract the bird: by touching the stick of the birdhouse, you can try to get the bird’s attention in order to tempt it to visit you next.

DevelopmentThe idea for Birdhouse originated when I was working on the Whispering Wall project ‘Naturalisation’ early 2016.EdenSpiekermann Berlin then co-developed the first stages of the project. We started a pilot to build five birdhouses, one for each of their office buildings in Berlin, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Singapore. These Birdhouses are in EdenSpiekermann-red, but the main series are white, like the Whispering Wall Units. During the Espi-Makerdays in April 2016, first developmental steps were taken and a concept prototype was presented. November 2016 the final prototype was developed by Christian Male of notbot Berlin. At the end of 2016, final tests were completed and I finished building the first six birdhouses in March 2017. Birdhouse was first presented in the summer of 2017 at my solo-exhibition at galerie weisser elefant, Berlin. A plan for further development of software and website was made together with programmers of EdenSpiekermann, which we lab-tested successfully. I launched a Kickstarter-campaign November 2017, which successfully funded the required additional software, website and 15 new Birdhouses. The Birdhouse project is scheduled to go live in August 2018 with 26 Birdhouses — and counting.